Your writing "eras"

[Rob_Royale]

I guess I just have just two 'eras' if you will.
1. Rob writing fantiasies about women he's known in places he's been.
2. Rob writing stories with characters and settings entirely undrept of (until that moment) off the cuff.
At some point the two intermixed a bit but after a while #1 was exhausted and #2 was the only way forward if I wanted to keep writing.

 

[Areala-chan]

Areala-chan's eras:

1) Fanfic era. New IP from the late '90s which gradually outgrew me and all the other writers who were around at the start. Had a small following, was honing writing chops, and learned mainly how to write a first draft that didn't completely suck.

2) First Literotica dalliance. My first two pieces of erotica are now a few years past legal drinking age. I wrote the first while drowning in emotions, wrote the second in a bout of fun, and took a twelve-year vacation.

3) Star Wars. There was a time in the 2000s when Dark Horse held the comic book rights to Star Wars stories. Occasionally they would hold open submissions where people could pitch stories and/or artwork. I pitched two separate stories, neither of which was accepted, but the first was key in that I could see actual improvement and a maturation in my abilities as an author when I compared it to previous work.

4) Return to Lit. Twelve years later, thanks to a prompt to "Write a story about two people falling in love who shouldn't", I went full Flowers in the Attic, and had a lot of fun. The story got a lot more feedback than anything else I'd written to that point, so I offered it up to Sammael Bard for critique here on the forums. Bard quickly brought me back down to earth, pointing out every one of its numerous flaws, and basically saying, "You write a great sex scene, but I don't see a story anywhere that makes me care." Challenge accepted. Crash Into Me was the result a year later, and the results spoke for themselves: it hit the category top list and stayed there for nine years. That, to me, was proof I could do this.

5) Modern Era. Ten years later, having completed two novellas for the site, I accomplished my goal of making a name for myself in the Lesbian Sex category with Chasing Cars. I'll be fifty years old in October, quite a different person than the one who got her start writing fan fiction as a teenager, but much like Bob Dylan, in some regards I feel much younger than that 'me' of more than three decades past.

Wonder what the next ten years hold in store. Guess I'll have to write them myself and see.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I'm interested to hear how other people think about the phases or stages of their writing. How do you label them? What defines them? What are some of your eras?

I'd never though about breaking it down like that but it's interesting doing it.

Thinking back
- the "no idea what I was doing" era - from early teens to late teens - the "winging it" era. I had no idea what I was doing but I used to write out "hot scenes" to insert into romances I was reading. I still have some of them and they're awful. Mostly straight narrative with very little dialog. LIke the wrost stories on Literotica LOL
- the "John Ringo" era - I read a snippet John wrote for people who wanted to learn to write about taking another author's story you liked and rewriting it in your own words - that was my first story on Literotica - "Hayley's Party" whch was all over the map and kind of grew chapter by chapter and got some nice ratings and feedback that encouraged me to keep going. I learned a lot writing that one and my next few stories sort of continued that learning curve.
- the "Selena Kitt" era - where I used the way she wrote as a model and example - my own stories but I kept hers and her writing style in mind as I wrote for the next 3 or 4 years. I still do to a certain extent - she's a great example.
- the "Chloe" era - from then until now, where I don't really rely on examples but just write my own way and my own plots and stories which are all over the map. Some of my sci-fi uses ideas from other authors - CJ Cherryh for "Welcome to Nockatunga Station," for example, and Heinlein for bits and pieces in my Chinese Hegemony universe. Eileen Chang's short stories and novels were a big influence in the settings for Tales from Old Shanghai, Beowulf was an influence on Blood Sacrifice and Huginn's Yule. As far as what I write though, it's mostly now all my own ideas and things that appeal to me - the two I'm working on at the moment are for Geek Day and totally whacko but they both make me laugh LOL. So humor is an influence too - my own sense of humor anyhow, which can be a bit dark and weird sometimes. I mean, sex with heptapods rotflmao - I still wonder how the heck I came up with that one! The tentacle-romance era LOL

 

[Areala-chan]

I mean, sex with heptapods rotflmao - I still wonder how the heck I came up with that one! The tentacle-romance era LOL

The imagination: simultaneously our own best friend and worst enemy. The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

 

[SimonDoom]

I had never really thought about this. Here goes:

Teen years: I did some creative writing for school assignments, often humorous and satirical.
The drought: For most of my adult life, until after the age of 50, I wrote no fiction. I wrote every day for my job, so I honed writing skills that way, but not by writing fiction.
The Literotica period: I've written and published stories here for almost nine and a half years, although I'm going through a mini-drought of not having published anything in a year and a half. Literotica is the only place I have published stories.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

My first year when I published 23 works for my Virginiaverse and the past five years publishing 26 works because I apparently ran out of stories to tell ...

 

[anthrodisiac]

My first year when I published 23 works for my Virginiaverse and the past five years publishing 26 works because I apparently ran out of stories to tell ...

Definitely didn't initially read that as "Virginia."

 

[bi_cathy]

Mid 90s to mid '00s: introspective poetry, French mostly, until I felt confident writing in English, which oscillated between introspective and goth for some reason.

Mid '00s to now: Non-fictional writing, though that evolved a lot too. I figured out a way to "free"lance, then part-time, then full-time write and get paid for it, while pursuing other careers. It helped me grow my confidence and voice a lot, and gave me a way to write when inspiration for fiction abandoned me.

Meanwhile early '10s to mid '10s: Found my fiction again in erotica, and published my first Literotica stories.

2015: I started working on I Dare You, which took four years to finish for various reasons, but it marked a new era in my involvement with my erotic writing, and a shift towards longer projects.

I feel like I'm going through another shift now, and my next writing will be different again.

 

[sijopunk]

I don't know if I didn't answer my own question or if I put my answer in another post and deleted it before closing down my old Lit account, but I went through three distinct times in my writing.

"Prehistory" - from when I was a little kid up until I was about 30, I wrote for fun and it was a hobby. I wrote a lot in high school, and that dropped off in college as I got busier, and stopped once I started working. This was totally unstructured, and nothing ever got published.

"Chuck Palahniuk" - During COVID, I started writing again, and tried writing more seriously. I had 5 drafts of novels that I wrote during or between NaNoWriMos. I really connected with Chuck Palahniuk's writing (he wrote Fight Club, among others), and this is still the dominating influence on my writing style with first person narration and minimalist, disturbed grammar, although I've tempered it a bit with warmer narrators.

"Chloe Tzang" - About a year ago I joined Lit and published a few stories. I got Chloe's attention because we have a lot of similar interests and influences. I was going through a writing funk, unable to produce anything I was happy with, and Chloe let me read & edit two of her manuscripts. I'd been searching for something and knew Chloe had it, and when I read those two manuscripts it was like pieces of a puzzle fell into place. I saw what she was doing that I'd been trying to do. That lead to a burst of stories, including one called "Language Exchange" that really marks the entrypoint of this new phase of my writing (I should republish this before Jasmine Tea now that I think about it).

I'm still in this third phase, which combines my writing style with Chloe's ability to bring characters and themes to life. She helped me find me find my perch (Korean/Korean American themes) and raised the bar for what I consider acceptable.